Curry Mee with Poached Chicken and Deep-fried Tofu

For tonight's dinner, I made a simple dish of noodles in curry, topped with slices of poached chicken (skin on), deep-fried tofu, cuttlefish ball (for variety), coriander and julienned cucumber (that was leftover from Sunday night's chicken rice meal). I decided to make the curry a little thicker (with a more intense coconut flavour) compared to laksa (which I'm accustomed to as being more dilute and "soupy"). After all, I did plan on calling this "Curry Mee" and not "Laksa".

Making this wasn't too difficult. On the other hand, I found it harder trying to harvest the lemongrass from our overflowing lemongrass plant (or more like a bush), trying to work my way through the long and spiky leaves that kept getting in my face. I prepared the spice blend using shallots, garlic, lemongrass, coriander, dried chillies (chilli paste) and belacan (shrimp paste). That's it! I fried up the paste with a good glug of oil, added some stock and coconut milk, tossed in the tofu that I had fried earlier this afternoon and some cuttlefish balls. I also poached some chicken drumsticks at the same time and picked the meat to be served with the noodles.

Finally, all that was left to do was boil the noodles and blanch some bean sprouts, put them in a bowl, ladle the curry over and add the garnishing. The cucumber does a good job of cutting through the richness and spiciness of the curry. And I love the deep-fried tofu that was chewy on the outside and soft and silky on the inside. Yum!